Jacksonville-Baldwin Rail-Trail

Just west of bustling downtown Jacksonville, the Jacksonville-Baldwin Rail-Trail, one of north Florida's oldest, traverses a rural setting of hardwood uplands, wetlands and pine flatwoods. A dense tree canopy shelters much of the nearly 15-mile paved path, providing habitat for ...

Cement Industry

Limestone and quartzite, two of the primary ingredients used to manufacture cement, are plentiful in Pend Oreille County. Add to this an abundance of water with the potential to generate electricity, and the county had nearly everything necessary to develop ...

The Metaline Mining District

The Metaline Mining District, or Metalines for short, is located in northeastern Washington along the Pend Oreille River. Although the district’s existence was always based on the rich ores—quartz, lead, silver—found there in the late nineteenth century, its mid-twentieth-century transformation ...

Placer Mining at Chinaman Bar

Just downstream from this point, is a place known as Chinaman Bar.

During the 1850s, miners explored remote drainages throughout the American West in search of the next big strike. This activity came to Pend Oreille County in 1855 when ...

Steamboats on the Pend Oreille River

Beginning in the nineteenth century, steamboats plied navigable waterways throughout the interior West, including the 55-mile-long stretch of the Pend Oreille River between Newport and Metaline Falls. First appearing in the late-1880s, the Pend Oreille River vessels were a familiar ...

Carl Harvey

Nineteenth-century gold seekers were the first non-Indians to settle along the Pend Oreille River. While most of the prospectors departed as anonymously as they came, a few stayed to take up homesteads. One became a beloved fixture in the community. ...

Fire Lookouts

Fire lookout towers have stood atop the Selkirk Mountains in Pend Oreille County for nearly a century. In the aftermath of the 1910 fires, which burned over three million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho, and Montana, the U.S. Forest ...

Pend Oreille County Historical Society

The residents of Pend Oreille County have long been interested in the history of their county. In 1923, the Pioneer Historical Society formed to highlight the history of the county’s earliest pioneers. The current Pend Oreille County Historical Society formed ...

Boundary Dam

The Boundary Hydroelectric Project is located in the Selkirk Mountains of northeastern Washington on the Pend Oreille River. It was completed in 1967 after more than a decade of planning and permitting, and has been providing power for both distant ...

Usk Bridge

In the early twentieth century, the burgeoning timber industry hastened the need for a reliable river crossing in central Pend Oreille County. With a natural rise above the river in an otherwise flat landscape, Usk seemed the most promising spot ...